Our "Bidness as Usual" Project: The e-Book

What better way to celebrate the July 4 holiday than with the publication of The Texas Tribune's second e-book?  

Over the course of the 83rd legislative session, the Tribune produced more than 60 articles on ethics and transparency among the state's elected officials, a project we dubbed "Bidness as Usual." The revelations: Some members of the Legislature routinely carried bills and took votes on issues near and dear to their pocketbooks — and used the weight of their office to enrich themselves and their families.

The project sparked a litany of ethics legislation, including measures that would have put lawmakers' financial disclosure forms on the internet and forced them to report their business contracts with government entities. In the end, little reform passed, and the elements that did were vetoed by Gov. Rick Perry. But this series, reproduced in full in our e-book, sparked the loudest conversation in years around ethics and transparency reform in Texas.

Downloading the e-book onto your reader of choice is simple. Here's what you do:

TO READ ON A KINDLE
Purchase the e-book for 99 cents in the Kindle Bookstore.

TO READ ON iOS, ANDROID OR OTHER MOBILE DEVICE

• If you have iBooks or another e-book reader installed, click this link from your mobile device. After the ebook downloads, your device will prompt you to select your e-book reader. 
• If you're using Kindle for iOS, click this link from your mobile device. Kindle for iOS takes care of the rest. 
• If you're reading this article on your computer, you can download the e-book now and read it later with iBooks. First, download this file. Drag the downloaded file into your iTunes Library. After you sync your mobile device with your computer, our e-book will appear in your iBooks.  

FOR ADVANCED USERS
You can also download both the epub and mobi versions of our e-book and read them in your favorite reader. (If you know what epub and mobi means, you probably know how to install them.) 

Special thanks to the team from Packa.gr, a new tool that took our "Bidness as Usual" stories and repackaged them as an e-book. We're really excited about this technology and hope to use it again soon.

If you're looking for another Texas Tribune e-book to download, check out reporter Jay Root's Oops! A Diary From the 2012 Campaign Trail. With Perry contemplating another bid for president, it's required reading.